February 5 Fishtrap Fireside

​Katherine Marrone is a writer, activist, and editor of Fishtrap’s community zine, “Circle of Seasons.” A new resident of Enterprise, she works as a legal advocate at Safe Harbors where she helps survivors of domestic/sexual violence and stalking seek justice and safety in Wallowa County. Having spent periods of her childhood in New York City, Italy, and Eastern Oregon, Katherine developed a love for examining the relationship between experience and identity. Her poems and essays explore gender, human rights and empathy, the meandering path of healing after trauma, finding pockets of joy in the mundane, traveling alone as a woman, and her obsession with the question: How and who do we love— and why?

Her work can be found in the sex and relationships advice column she created in college called “Pillow Talk”— in which she answered questions about consent and healthy relationships— and in the international feminist publication, Bitch Media, where she explored the state of sex education in the U.S. today and the connection between violence and gender roles. After freelancing for Bitch, Katherine volunteered at a juvenile detention center in Portland, OR, where she facilitated a writing workshop with youth. It was there that she realized the transformative power of space: the space to tell one’s story— and the space to trust that someone will listen.

Katherine is grateful to grow and live within such a creative and supportive community, and she is honored to read for Fishtrap Fireside for the first time. 

​Gregg Kleiner grew up playing in creeks and outside various rural backwaters of Oregon. For summer vacations, his parents took their five children on extended backpacking trips around Oregon. At an early age, those trips instilled in him a love of the outdoors, wilderness, and mountains – especially the Wallowas. At age 16, he spent a year as an AFS exchange student in the mountains for northern Thailand, where he lived for a month at a Buddhist monastery under the tutelage of an aged monk. He has travelled widely, with extended stays in Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and Ecuador, as well as trips to Myanmar, China, and Cuba. In the winter of 2003, he served as the Fishtrap Writer-In-Residence, living at the head of the lake with Lori Salus, and their two children, teaching at all three high schools and getting to know the wonderful residents of Wallowa County. He and Lori now call this County home. Kleiner is the author of the novel, Where River Turns to Sky, which was a finalist for both the Paterson Fiction Prize and the Oregon Book Award, and was optioned for a feature film by Fox Searchlight. His first book for kids (and their grownups), Please Don’t Paint Our Planet Pink! asks might happen if we could see CO2 in the atmosphere if it were pink? He has worked as a wildlife biologist, journalist, visiting professor, communications professional, and dairy goat farmer. His writing has appeared in Orion, The Oregonian, The Sun, The Saturday Evening Post, Whitefish Review, Terrain, and elsewhere.

Nathan Slinker’s poems have recently appeared in Third Coast, Ninth Letter, CutBank, Waxwing, The Greensboro Review, and Kenyon Review Online among other journals and magazines. He has been a Fishtrap fellow, a semi-finalist for the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize and the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, and a finalist for New River Press’s Many Voices Prize. He grew up in Enterprise, and after spending a number of years all over the West, is now living back in Wallowa County.